And finally we come to the conclusion of my short series. Long ago games used to be a popular American past time, with many families stealing away into arcades to play Pong, Centipede, Galaga, and the like. Then after the crash of the gaming industry, it became more of a nerd thing as the Nintendo Entertainment System came out. Gaming stayed as a more "underground" nerdy thing to do until the prevalence of the fifth generation of gaming (Playstation, N64, Saturn) started to remove such thoughts, gaming became more popular. The sixth generation (Playstation 2, Gamecube, Dreamcast, X-Box) removed these thoughts even more, and now in the seventh generation (Playstation 3, X-Box 360, Wii) gaming has almost become the casual thing to do. Add in games like World of Warcraft that has over 10,000,000 gamers playing it, gaming has become a widespread occurrence, mostly thanks to WoW and the Wii.

Several advancements in gaming have occurred the past 2 generations, though many of them aren't really seen as big things yet. Those things being User Generated Content prevalence, minitransactions, and finally achievements. UGC started really happening last generation, but is becoming prevalent in this one. Minitransactions have really hit it off with Rock Band and Guitar Hero, and finally achievements have been wide spread. Achievements add gameplay time, and in some games (like Mythos) reward you with bonus stats and such for doing them. Games like Guild Wars use them as ways to be all shiney and brag about your achievements, and give you bonuses in the sequel. Even World of Warcraft will be adding achievements alongside WotLK.

But one most wonder if the gaming industry is stable enough to survive? UGC, minitransactions, and achievements can only go so far before they become more of the same. Ultimately, the arcade / gaming industry crash of 1983 happened because there was an oversaturation of games, that were all either low quality, or more of the same. You can only play so many Space Invaders / Pong / Centipede / Pac-Man / Galaga clones before you grow bored. What is there to stop this from happening again? We are seeing a larger presence of low quality games on the Nintendo side mostly in an attempt to get quick money. Most of these are just minigames that you've played before.

Add onto this that the game industry is finding it harder and harder to put a decent original game out, and you're finding things more oversatured and samey. Everything is beginning to seem like a sequel of everything, or a prequel, or whatever. Very few new series are coming out. Very few original solo game epics are coming out. Indeed, the past 3 articles have been sort of foreshadowing this, but the industry is slowly reaching a very scary point for those of us who know how things went down in the past, or know people who know that time in gaming. Do not take this as a "gaming is dying" prophetic vision, but rather take this as words to heed. The industry is slowly dying, and the effects of that can be seen on Sony. One could say that ultimately the reason Sony is reporting massive loses is because their console sucks right? Well, maybe, but maybe it has to do with the fact that it had cost 600$ when it came out, and even buying that was causing Sony to "lose" money. It cost way WAY WAY more than 600$ to make a PS3, you probably would have to pay well over 1,000$ to even break even with what Sony paid to produce one. Things are getting more and more expensive, and in turn, things are becoming less and less creative, and more and more about being the best out there. You want to be the best Halo-esque FPS, or the best modern FPS, or the best generic MMORPG to beat WoW, or the best action game with THE MOST EPIC ACTION (hello Gears of War), the best jRPG...etc. And in order to be "the best", you have to have the best graphics. The best sound. The best VAs. The best everything, and you have to have well known gameplay, or else it is a tough sell to the publishers and to the consumer. Again, leading to the oversaturation that was once seen long ago.

What can be done to fix this? I dunno. Unfortunately too many gamers worry about graphics, and such, and as such become jaded to the older games. ("Ew..the graphics in Diablo 2 are SO atrocious...") which in turn forces these companies to make good graphics. Which costs them a lot of money. And dev time. I think the reason the industry is slowly dying is because a large majority of the consumers are pushing it that way. There is more to a game than its graphics, and graphics mean little if the gameplay is shite, and yet these companies feel obligated to make their games look mindblowing.

Is the future of the gaming industry bleak? Are we reserved to fail again, as the whole industry topples beneath its 5 to 6 digit production cost games and 6 to 7 digit production cost consoles? Or do you think that everything will be fine, there's no way that'll happen again?

It's tough to say, but one thing is for sure: the situation has to change soon, and fast.